US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq war
By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
17 June 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politi ... ory=647397
American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.
Yesterday's disclosure led to calls by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened ministers to allegations that they held back the facts until after the general election.
Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.
But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."
Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military targets "away from civilian targets", he said. This avoids breaching the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use only against military targets.
Britain, which has no stockpiles of the weapons, ratified the convention, but the US did not.
The confirmation that US officials misled British ministers led to new questions last night about the value of the latest assurances by the US. Mr Cohen said there were rumours that the firebombs were used in the US assault on the insurgent stronghold in Fallujah last year, claims denied by the US. He is tabling more questions seeking assurances that the weapons were not used against civilians.
Mr Ingram did not explain why the US officials had misled him, but the US and British governments were accused of a cover-up. The Iraq Analysis Group, which campaigned against the war, said the US authorities only admitted the use of the weapons after the evidence from reporters had become irrefutable.
Mike Lewis, a spokesman for the group, said: "The US has used internationally reviled weapons that the UK refuses to use, and has then apparently lied to UK officials, showing how little weight the UK carries in influencing American policy."
He added: "Evidence that Mr Ingram had given false information to Parliament was publicly available months ago. He has waited until after the election to admit to it - a clear sign of the Government's embarrassment that they are doing nothing to restrain their own coalition partner in Iraq."
The US State Department website admitted in the run-up to the election that US forces had used MK77s in Iraq. Protests were made by MPs, but it was only this week that Mr Ingram confirmed the reports were true.
Mike Moore, the Liberal Democrat defence spokes-man, said: "It is very serious that this type of weapon was used in Iraq, but this shows the US has not been completely open with the UK. We are supposed to have a special relationship.
"It has also taken two months for the minister to clear this up. This is welcome candour, but it will raise fresh questions about how open the Government wished to be... before the election."
The MK77 bombs, an evolution of the napalm used in Vietnam and Korea, carry kerosene-based jet fuel and polystyrene so that, like napalm, the gel sticks to structures and to its victims. The bombs lack stabilising fins, making them far from precise.
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by .... on 17 Jun 2005, 12:04
You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...
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by Leonid on 28 Jun 2005, 06:06
The Wall Street Journal Europe
How Nelson Saved the World
By RUSSELL LEWIS
June 28, 2005
On Oct. 21 1805, off Cape Trafalgar on the Spanish coast, Admiral Lord Nelson won the greatest battle in the annals of sail, routing Napoleon's Navy without losing a single ship himself. The Queen launches this year's bicentennial celebrations in Portsmouth today. It's understandable that the British should honor a triumph that put paid to Napoleon's plans for invading their island, and began a century in which Britannia ruled the waves.
Why should anyone but the Brits commemorate the birth of British imperialism? In addition to the French, Americans look back on that era with misgivings. Trafalgar marked the start of the worst period of Anglo-American relations on record that culminated in an unnecessary war in 1812.
The British blockade of Napoleon's European empire -- in response to the French emperor's closure of Continental ports to British trade -- generated friction between London and Washington. Americans were irked by the Royal Navy's policy of stopping and searching their ships and arresting for desertion any American sailor who had previously served on board British naval vessels. (Indeed when I recently visited Nelson's flagship HMS Victory in Portsmouth, I looked at the list of sailors who served at Trafalgar to see if there was a namesake of mine. There was a Lewis but he was American.) President Thomas Jefferson forbid British ships entry to American waters; Britain, in turn, prohibited all direct trade between America and Europe. Washington declared war just as the British rescinded their Orders in Council prohibiting U.S. trade with Europe. Too late! It took a month for news of this conciliatory gesture to cross the Atlantic. This war proceeded with some notable if small-scale American naval successes, the British burning of the White House and U.S. victories at Baltimore, before peace was restored.
Yet, despite the grievous aftermath, Nelson's victory at Trafalgar was a boon to America as well as to Europe and the rest of the world. America's renowned 19th century naval strategist, Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, wrote of the British blockade of France that "those far distant storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the domination of the world."
Jefferson viewed Napoleon with alarm. When the French colony of Louisiana was ceded to Napoleon by Spain in a secret treaty in 1801, the U.S. president worried that the French had wider designs on the American continent. As Jefferson remarked at the time: "The day that France takes possession of New Orleans, we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation." Fortunately Napoleon's troops were turned back from Santo Domingo (today's Haiti), discouraging him from any more adventures. He sold Louisiana -- then about a third of modern America -- for $16 million, or 4 cents an acre.
But Admiral Mahan was still right that had Napoleon beaten Britain and established a European empire, his whole career suggests that he couldn't have stopped there. Napoleon once said: "You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them." America surely would've been next.
As it happens, after Trafalgar, Britannia did rule the waves for a hundred years, not out of benevolence -- except for stamping out the slave trade -- but to protect her commerce. In doing so Britain enabled a huge growth of world trade and prosperity. Moreover, with the Royal Navy standing guard, the danger of Continental European nations interfering in American affairs -- during the Civil War for instance -- was zero. So America was spared the expense of maintaining a large navy for most of the 19th century and instead got on with opening up its west.
Historians differ as to whether Napoleon could ever have managed to invade England. But English people then took it seriously and flukes happen in history. A great French army was collected at Boulogne with a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats to transport it across the Channel. Boney believed that only if his forces could control the crossing for six hours in reasonable weather then the French could swiftly vanquish his chief enemy in Europe.
To that end Napoleon instructed Admiral Villeneuve in command of the fleet at Toulon to break out of the English blockade. The plan was to lure the Royal Navy's squadrons over to the West Indies, then return and combine with the French Atlantic fleet emerging from Brest to escort his soldiers to land in England.
The plan failed. The English Channel remained guarded throughout, while Nelson's fleet chased Villeneuve across the Atlantic and back. Instead of heading for Brest, the French admiral, his nerve failing him, turned south and took refuge in Cadiz. He did emerge in desperation, having learnt that he was about to be sacked. He was attacked and crushed off Cape Trafalgar. Villeneuve's flagship was boarded and he was taken prisoner.
Trafalgar was a naval blitzkrieg. Of the combined fleet of 33 French and Spanish ships, 17 were either captured or put out of action. People are now apt to think that these wooden ship battles were pretty small beer. A visit to Nelson's 3500-ton flagship, HMS Victory, with its 100 cannons, now permanently anchored in Portsmouth, should disabuse them. The gun power of his fleet at Trafalgar was six times that of Napoleon's army at Waterloo. Before Nelson, these guns were never used to their full potential. Fleets sailed in line alongside each other and exchanged fire, but casualties were light, and the losers mostly got away with the loss of a few ships.
Nelson believed in annihilation. The completeness of the Trafalgar rout was made possible by his brilliant, unorthodox and risky tactics of breaking the enemy line in two places, and concentrating fire on a few ships at a time before dealing with the rest. This called for central control of the action, made possible through a recently invented, rapid method of flag signaling. This communication system was revolutionary in the same way that radio was in making central control of tank armies effective in World War II. All this together with superior British gunnery and seamanship, not to mention the Nelson touch, did the trick.
From then on the French navy, apart from a few, small and usually unsuccessful sorties, remained bottled up for the rest of the war, which continued for another nine years. British Prime Minister William Pitt summed up the consequences, saying "England has saved herself by her exertions and, as I trust, Europe by her example."
That hope of saving Europe at first seemed wishful. Napoleon proceeded to notch up his greatest victories, rolling up the Austrian, the Russian and the Prussian armies. He replied to the British blockade by banning imports of British goods. Napoleon's blockade was eventually undermined by smuggling and the hunger of the whole Continent, not only for cheap British textiles but also tobacco, tea, coffee, cocoa, cotton and spices only available from countries overseas. It was Russia's refusal to keep British goods out that led Napoleon into his supreme folly of marching on Moscow, where he lost half a million men.
British naval power also made it possible for Wellington to take his troops to Spain to support the guerrillas and tie down a further quarter of a million French troops. The disasters befalling the Grand Army breathed new life into the anti-Napoleonic alliance, which was nourished by British gold, and finally brought his defeat and abdication. Control of the sea lanes allowed Britain safely to ship and maintain an army on the Continent.
In a very real sense the battle of Trafalgar made possible the victory at Waterloo 10 years later. So the Europe of independent nations had good cause to be grateful for the one sea power which refused to bow to the French dictator and whose defiance led to his eventual overthrow. Otherwise they might still be vassals in his empire -- not exactly the kind of union that even the keenest Europhiles would wish for today. The battle of Trafalgar preserved freedom in the old world and the new.
Mr. Lewis is a former general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, London.
How Nelson Saved the World
By RUSSELL LEWIS
June 28, 2005
On Oct. 21 1805, off Cape Trafalgar on the Spanish coast, Admiral Lord Nelson won the greatest battle in the annals of sail, routing Napoleon's Navy without losing a single ship himself. The Queen launches this year's bicentennial celebrations in Portsmouth today. It's understandable that the British should honor a triumph that put paid to Napoleon's plans for invading their island, and began a century in which Britannia ruled the waves.
Why should anyone but the Brits commemorate the birth of British imperialism? In addition to the French, Americans look back on that era with misgivings. Trafalgar marked the start of the worst period of Anglo-American relations on record that culminated in an unnecessary war in 1812.
The British blockade of Napoleon's European empire -- in response to the French emperor's closure of Continental ports to British trade -- generated friction between London and Washington. Americans were irked by the Royal Navy's policy of stopping and searching their ships and arresting for desertion any American sailor who had previously served on board British naval vessels. (Indeed when I recently visited Nelson's flagship HMS Victory in Portsmouth, I looked at the list of sailors who served at Trafalgar to see if there was a namesake of mine. There was a Lewis but he was American.) President Thomas Jefferson forbid British ships entry to American waters; Britain, in turn, prohibited all direct trade between America and Europe. Washington declared war just as the British rescinded their Orders in Council prohibiting U.S. trade with Europe. Too late! It took a month for news of this conciliatory gesture to cross the Atlantic. This war proceeded with some notable if small-scale American naval successes, the British burning of the White House and U.S. victories at Baltimore, before peace was restored.
Yet, despite the grievous aftermath, Nelson's victory at Trafalgar was a boon to America as well as to Europe and the rest of the world. America's renowned 19th century naval strategist, Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, wrote of the British blockade of France that "those far distant storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the domination of the world."
Jefferson viewed Napoleon with alarm. When the French colony of Louisiana was ceded to Napoleon by Spain in a secret treaty in 1801, the U.S. president worried that the French had wider designs on the American continent. As Jefferson remarked at the time: "The day that France takes possession of New Orleans, we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation." Fortunately Napoleon's troops were turned back from Santo Domingo (today's Haiti), discouraging him from any more adventures. He sold Louisiana -- then about a third of modern America -- for $16 million, or 4 cents an acre.
But Admiral Mahan was still right that had Napoleon beaten Britain and established a European empire, his whole career suggests that he couldn't have stopped there. Napoleon once said: "You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them." America surely would've been next.
As it happens, after Trafalgar, Britannia did rule the waves for a hundred years, not out of benevolence -- except for stamping out the slave trade -- but to protect her commerce. In doing so Britain enabled a huge growth of world trade and prosperity. Moreover, with the Royal Navy standing guard, the danger of Continental European nations interfering in American affairs -- during the Civil War for instance -- was zero. So America was spared the expense of maintaining a large navy for most of the 19th century and instead got on with opening up its west.
Historians differ as to whether Napoleon could ever have managed to invade England. But English people then took it seriously and flukes happen in history. A great French army was collected at Boulogne with a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats to transport it across the Channel. Boney believed that only if his forces could control the crossing for six hours in reasonable weather then the French could swiftly vanquish his chief enemy in Europe.
To that end Napoleon instructed Admiral Villeneuve in command of the fleet at Toulon to break out of the English blockade. The plan was to lure the Royal Navy's squadrons over to the West Indies, then return and combine with the French Atlantic fleet emerging from Brest to escort his soldiers to land in England.
The plan failed. The English Channel remained guarded throughout, while Nelson's fleet chased Villeneuve across the Atlantic and back. Instead of heading for Brest, the French admiral, his nerve failing him, turned south and took refuge in Cadiz. He did emerge in desperation, having learnt that he was about to be sacked. He was attacked and crushed off Cape Trafalgar. Villeneuve's flagship was boarded and he was taken prisoner.
Trafalgar was a naval blitzkrieg. Of the combined fleet of 33 French and Spanish ships, 17 were either captured or put out of action. People are now apt to think that these wooden ship battles were pretty small beer. A visit to Nelson's 3500-ton flagship, HMS Victory, with its 100 cannons, now permanently anchored in Portsmouth, should disabuse them. The gun power of his fleet at Trafalgar was six times that of Napoleon's army at Waterloo. Before Nelson, these guns were never used to their full potential. Fleets sailed in line alongside each other and exchanged fire, but casualties were light, and the losers mostly got away with the loss of a few ships.
Nelson believed in annihilation. The completeness of the Trafalgar rout was made possible by his brilliant, unorthodox and risky tactics of breaking the enemy line in two places, and concentrating fire on a few ships at a time before dealing with the rest. This called for central control of the action, made possible through a recently invented, rapid method of flag signaling. This communication system was revolutionary in the same way that radio was in making central control of tank armies effective in World War II. All this together with superior British gunnery and seamanship, not to mention the Nelson touch, did the trick.
From then on the French navy, apart from a few, small and usually unsuccessful sorties, remained bottled up for the rest of the war, which continued for another nine years. British Prime Minister William Pitt summed up the consequences, saying "England has saved herself by her exertions and, as I trust, Europe by her example."
That hope of saving Europe at first seemed wishful. Napoleon proceeded to notch up his greatest victories, rolling up the Austrian, the Russian and the Prussian armies. He replied to the British blockade by banning imports of British goods. Napoleon's blockade was eventually undermined by smuggling and the hunger of the whole Continent, not only for cheap British textiles but also tobacco, tea, coffee, cocoa, cotton and spices only available from countries overseas. It was Russia's refusal to keep British goods out that led Napoleon into his supreme folly of marching on Moscow, where he lost half a million men.
British naval power also made it possible for Wellington to take his troops to Spain to support the guerrillas and tie down a further quarter of a million French troops. The disasters befalling the Grand Army breathed new life into the anti-Napoleonic alliance, which was nourished by British gold, and finally brought his defeat and abdication. Control of the sea lanes allowed Britain safely to ship and maintain an army on the Continent.
In a very real sense the battle of Trafalgar made possible the victory at Waterloo 10 years later. So the Europe of independent nations had good cause to be grateful for the one sea power which refused to bow to the French dictator and whose defiance led to his eventual overthrow. Otherwise they might still be vassals in his empire -- not exactly the kind of union that even the keenest Europhiles would wish for today. The battle of Trafalgar preserved freedom in the old world and the new.
Mr. Lewis is a former general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, London.
I will put my breath into you and you shall live again.
EZEKIEL 37:14
EZEKIEL 37:14
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Leonid - National Team
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- Joined: 06 Dec 2004, 21:54
by Leonid on 29 Jun 2005, 19:32
The Mark Steyn Interview
by John Hawkins
John Hawkins: You're one of the many people (myself included) who have come out and said loud and often that you think Bin Laden is dead. Are you still of that opinion and if so, how do you account for the tape recording from "Bin Laden" that the government says they believe is real?
Mark Steyn: First, an audio recording is the easiest form of evidence to fake - easier than paper, easier than video. I got my first job in radio from faking an aircheck in my bedroom when I was 17. So if the only recorded evidence of your identity in the last 14 months is an audio tape, that suggests either you're dead or in too poor condition even for the most artfully edited video appearance.
Secondly, the US Government said they were "almost certain" it was bin Laden. That Swiss institute said they were "almost certain" it wasn't. In this instance, the Swiss are the disinterested party. With everything that's come out since 9/11, I have no great confidence in the alleged expertise of Federal agencies. It's also clear that the Bush Administration is in no great hurry to pronounce bin Laden dead: true, the Dems keep teasing them about the fact that he's still running around out there, but that's less of a problem than declaring him deceased and having Chirac, Schroder and the rest of the gang saying, "Congratulations, you got your man. War's over. Everybody go home."
Thirdly, he isn't actually "running around". Since 9/11, al-Qaeda have been unable to pull off any kind of follow-up in a western country: their only successes have been in more loosely policed environments, such as Tunisia and Bali. That suggests the US was able to accomplish a serious degradation of their infrastructure during the Afghan campaign, and border vigilance is doing a lot of the rest. The way to respond to that would be for al-Qaeda to encourage a few more freelance operations by western Muslims, like the LAX guy and the shoebomber. After all, the ideological supporters of bin Ladenism vastly outnumber the formal card-carriers. But even the shoebomber types have fallen silent. If ever there was a time for a video call to jihad, these last eight or nine months have been it. OBL hasn't done it because he can't. Audio cassettes aren't going to cut it: even al-Jazeera wants better visuals.
John Hawkins: How likely do you think it is that we'll see a permanent resolution to the dispute between the Israelis & Palestinians within the next decade?
Mark Steyn: Not very. Your man Ken Layne called the Palestinians "a wrecked people" and that's right. Whatever the merits of their cause, the decision by the PA's corrupt and incompetent leadership to infect their youth with this death-cult psychosis has only postponed indefinitely any kind of Palestinian state. They need several years without two things: 1) Arafat and his bespoke apologists (Saeb and Hanan and co), who have nothing to offer; as I've said before, give 'em Switzerland to run and they'd turn it into a sewer. And 2) The UN: the UN and its "refugee" "camps" are one of the biggest obstacles to peace and are deeply complicit in both the territory's culture of corruption and its terrorism. The biggest mistake in this long tragedy was the original British partition of the Palestine Mandate in 1922, for no other reason than to carve out an invented kingdom for a Hashemite prince they thought could save them a few quid in administration costs. Penny wise, pound foolish. Jordan is a Palestinian state and Jordan needs to be involved in the final settlement of this question. If we're to have a second Palestinian state, it should include some Jordanian territory, too.
John Hawkins: There is a profound difference in the way that most Americans and most Europeans seem to view the conflict in Israel. What do you think accounts for that difference?
Mark Steyn: You have to differentiate between the British and the Continent. The British aren't anti-Semitic, but they're hot for Arabs. The British ruling class looks at the Arab and sees a desert version of his own most cherished myths: look at the Prince of Wales all togged out in his Lawrence of Arabia get-up just to have dinner with one of bin Laden's brothers. The Continentals are something else. Some just don't like Jews and resent having been unable to express that opinion honestly these last 50 years. But with the others the psychology's a little more complicated. Almost every European country was tainted by the Holocaust and Nazi occupation, but for the sake of the post-war settlement the world agreed to pretend only Germany was to blame. Not so. In France and Holland, the locals eagerly herded Jews onto those eastbound trains. In Belgium, industrial production went up under the Nazis. After half-a-century, the Continentals are sick of this guilt trip. They need to see Israel as the aggressor for their own psychological health. That's why that wacky Dutch broad who's married to the big Eurobanker keeps comparing Sharon to Hitler and Likud to the Nazis. It's a way of evening the score - "Sure, we had Hitler, you have Sharon; we have Auschwitz, you have Jenin." It's their way of belatedly taking a moral shower, a way of saying, "See, the score's one-one now. You're as bad as us. Let's just call it a draw and move on."
John Hawkins: Do you think we would have been better off if we would have invaded Iraq this summer instead of waiting this long?
Mark Steyn: Yes. The time lost has emboldened America's enemies - I use the term elastically - from the peace movement, which is a little less of a joke today than it was last spring, to Jacques Chirac to Kim Jong-Il. John Podhoretz keeps writing these columns in The New York Post congratulating Bush on one tremendous victory after another - over Tom Daschle, over Kofi Annan, over Dominique de Villepin. But these are not the enemy, they're just speed-bumps on the way to the enemy, and they should all have been left receding into the distance in the rear-view mirror a long time ago.
John Hawkins: Hypothetically, let's say that somehow, someway, George Bush were convinced not to invade Iraq and were to promise not to invade any other nation during the war on terrorism. What do you think the consequences of that would be?
Mark Steyn: He'd be a one-term President, and the death of the west would be pretty much a certainty. In hard terms, the best reason to hang Saddam is pour encourager les autres. Similarly, if he gets off, the North Koreans and Syrians and the more devious princes in the House of Saud will draw entirely reasonable conclusions about their freedom to operate.
John Hawkins: If we invade Iraq without getting UN approval, what do you think the consequences will be for the United Nations?
Mark Steyn: The UN will survive but it will be greatly diminished, which will be a good thing. I don't want it involved in the war, or in the post-war reconstruction.
John Hawkins: Let's say that things go well in Iraq and that we dispose of Saddam in short order with a minimal number of American and Iraqi civilian casualties. What do you think our next step in the war on terrorism should be?
Mark Steyn: The next step should be to quarantine the Saudis. The US has a moral distaste for imperialism, which is fair enough, but, on the other hand, when it scuppered the British and French over Suez in 1956, all it did was deliver the Middle East out of western influence and into the hands of what it thought were pliable strongmen. That's no more morally superior than western imperialism and in practical terms it's been a lot worse. We need to reform the entire region. To those cynical Europeans who say, "Oh, it's absurd to think Arabs can ever be functioning members of a democrat state", I'd say, in that case why are you allowing virtually unrestricted Muslim immigration into your own countries? So I'd say: after Iraq, Iran won't be far behind; we then quarantine Saudi Arabia and explain the realities of life to Egypt and Syria.
John Hawkins: How do you see the conflict between the United States and North Korea playing out?
Mark Steyn: I'm relatively relaxed, if only because a while back I made my own peace with the big change in global reality: during the Cold War I was never one of those people living in fear of impending nuclear annihilation - the nukes were in the hands of the Americans, British, French, Russians and Chinese, none of whom are stark staring nuts. Now the nukes have gone freelance, and more or less anyone can grab one and take out, if not New York or London, then one of their less vigilant neighbours - Vancouver or Rotterdam. It's a horrible vision, and I don't know why the Give-Peace-A-Chance crowd are so insouciant about it, but I'd be very surprised if we get through the next five years without a terrible catastrophe in a western city.
John Hawkins: Are you surprised that Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is now saying that the US doesn't need to go back to the UN Security Council again and that Canada will support a US attack on Iraq?
Mark Steyn: No. I'm never surprised by what M Chretien says because he'll likely say something just the opposite 24 hours later. In a way, I prefer Herr Schroder's position. If your people are opposed to war, why not say we'll have no truck with this? Chretien - with his silly Texan sneers at Liberal fundraisers - has encouraged anti-Americanism. Fair enough - except that 90% of the Canadian economy is dependent on the US. Hence, his ludicrous attempt to ride both horses - to be privately supportive of Washington while hoping no one gets to hear about it back home. He's an irrelevant old fool.
John Hawkins: Do you think most Canadians are concerned about the fact that their military has been so drastically underfunded that Canada, a country with a long, proud history of punching above its weight class militarily, wouldn't be capable of going to war with a third world country anymore?
Mark Steyn: I'd like to think they were. Canada's regiments are some of the most distinguished in the Commonwealth, and the world. The Royal Canadian Air Force was at one time the most glamorous air force in the world. The Royal Canadian Navy had the third largest surface fleet in the world. But Pierre Trudeau's alleged "reinvention" of Canada was actually little more than a demolition job, and among the things to be most comprehensively demolished was our military tradition. A nation that can't defend itself isn't a nation anymore. Ottawa and Washington have just announced a so-called "mutual aid" agreement, whereby, in the event of a terrorist strike on a US or Canadian city, each country's armed forces would be able to respond to the other's needs. I don't think this means, if al-Qaeda hit Detroit or Minneapolis, you're going to be seeing the Princess Pats or Lord Strathcona's Horse on the streets down there.
John Hawkins: You're a regular visitor to Europe so I'm sure you've seen plenty of anti-Americanism over there. But, is there any surprise in Europe over the amount of venom directed at Europe from Americans these days? There was very little of that sort of thing before 9/11, but it has certainly picked up since then.
Mark Steyn: They don't get it. They insulted America decade in, decade out, and no-one cared because no-one noticed. After 9/11, Americans started noticing.
John Hawkins: Why did the Conservative party in Britain, the Tories, turn into such a total and complete mess after Thatcher left office?
Mark Steyn: Because British Conservatism is even more of an incompatible coalition than American conservatism. In the US, you have fiscal conservatives, and the religious right, and the gun nuts, and they don't all rub along, but they're not explicitly opposed to each other. In the UK, there's no social conservatism to speak of and not much libertarianism either. What you have are Atlanticist Conservatives, like Mrs Thatcher, and a numerically smaller but vastly more influential group of essentially defeatist patrician Conservatives who think that Britain's a lost cause unless it's folded in to a European superstate whose legal systems, parliamentary structures and political culture are completely at odds with a thousand years of British history. Mrs Thatcher was able to hold the defeatist patricians at bay for 11 years. John Major wasn't.
John Hawkins: I'm hearing all sorts of horror stories about law enforcement in Britain. People are being locked up for defending their homes, the police are no longer even investigating burglaries that aren't easy to solve, & the crime rate is exploding. What is causing British law enforcement to fall apart like this?
Mark Steyn: Crime in Britain is terrible, and the worse it gets the more adamant the police are that you should be able to do nothing about it yourself. The British are different from the French and the Russians and almost every other European power in that their revolution - the British Revolution - took place overseas, in the American colonies. The British subjects who were interested in liberty won the day in the American colonies. At home, the view that "public order" should take precedence prevails to this day. When I bought my home in New Hampshire, I asked the local police chief (it's a one-man department) about what I should do in the event of an attempted break-in. He said, "Well, you could call me at home. But it'd be better if you dealt with it. You're there and I'm not." The British police would rather die than admit that. So, instead of prosecuting the burglar, they prosecute the homeowner for "disproportionate response". You're supposed to wait until the burglar has revealed his weapon before picking yours. "Ah, forgive me, old boy, for reaching for the kitchen knife. I see you've brought not a machete but a blunt instrument. Be a good sport and allow me a moment to retrieve my cricket bat from under the bed, there's a good egg." This is insane, but, despite the visible deterioration of civic life in even the leafiest suburbs and villages, the British show no sign of rousing themselves to do anything about it.
John Hawkins: Who do you see winning the Democratic primary and taking on George Bush in 2004?
Mark Steyn: Not the newly Jewish John Kerry, or whatever his original name is. There's an Irish butter called Kerrygold, which seems vaguely apt. John Kerry is this season's Al Gore: he's being defined by the jokes about him. Not Howard Dean: he's a lightweight already way out of his league, and his "pro-choice" pandering was pathetic even by Dem standards; he all but called for audience volunteers so he could demonstrate his bona fides by performing a partial-birth abortion on them. Right now, I'd say Lieberman and Edwards look best, and, in that game, you'd have to give the advantage to Edwards, as he's closer to where the base is on the war. It's true Clinton was comparatively a "right-wing" Democrat but, to the dopey peacenik base, he had his street cred with his Grosvenor Square demos and the draft-dodging. This year it's harder to be a right-wing Dem because the measure of that is the war, on which the base demands total frivolity. My one hope is that Al Sharpton stays in a long time.
John Hawkins: Since you cover movies for the Spectator, how about giving us you top 5 movies from 2002/2003 along with perhaps one sentence on what made each movie so exceptional.
Mark Steyn: Well, not sure how many I can remember but here goes...
Pauline et Paulette - If you only see one film about a mentally subnormal Flemish geriatric in a small Belgian town, make it this one. Really.
The Closet - This was one of my favourite comedies of the year. A French movie about a dull accountant who hears he's about to be fired and so comes out as gay (he's not at all) so that they won't be able to get rid of him. Funny take on political correctness.
We Were Soldiers - In a way I preferred this to Black Hawk Down because it's so square. It's a film about soldiering in Vietnam that could have been made in 1965. The bit at the end with the mocking of the dopey press corps is priceless.
Unfaithful - the French lover's a joke, but Diane Lane is awfully good
Spider-Man - I would have liked a swingier theme tune, and the Green Goblin was never the most interesting villain, but everything else works very well.
John Hawkins: Tell us a little bit about your newest book, The Face Of The Tiger.
Mark Steyn: Well, it's a collection of columns and essays on 9/11 in the broadest sense - from my instant reaction on the day itself to a review of Black Hawk Down to longer essays on rebuilding the Middle East. I started getting requests for a collection and round about the G8 summit in Alberta I thought well, why not? I think most of the stuff stands up well, and some of my predictions made on the day itself - like the end of Nato - look better every week.
John Hawkins: Can you recommend three non-fiction books that you think everyone should read?
Mark Steyn: Not really. These days, I find myself reading more fiction than non-fiction. After 9/11, I read John Buchan's Greenmantle, which is set during the Great War and is about a Messianic Muslim leader - a lot of people think Buchan is racist; what they really mean is that he's very sharp on particular national characteristics. His view of the Germans and the Arabs stands up very well. Along the same lines, just before Die Another Day came out, I re-read Ian Fleming's From Russia With Love: the section set in Turkey is very pertinent and well observed. Ghazi Algosaibi, the Saudi Minister of Water, was kind enough to send me his latest novel, A Love Story, with the warm personal inscription "To Mark, Ambivalently, Ghazi". It's very erotic in a sublimated kind of way. Ghazi's a classic example of the problem with a lot of Middle Eastern and Asian countries: they've got a ruling class that's charming, witty, amusing, intelligent, but is hopeless at actually ruling. Finally, let me put in a plug for Ken Layne's Dot.Con, which I read in a single sitting and is hilarious.
John Hawkins: Do you have any tips for all of us bloggers who are hoping to one day live the "life of Steyn" and jet around the world making scads of cash for cranking out editorials?
Mark Steyn: I never know how to answer this. Most of my work is for Hollinger Inc, a Canadian media group whose principal assets are in the United States and the United Kingdom. Well, I'm a Canadian whose principal assets are in the United States and the United Kingdom, so I'm never going to find a better fit than that. My advice is: you shouldn't become so ideological you can't see the comedy in your own side. That's one of the differences between Fleet Street and the American press. My other advice is that almost any other English-speaking country, from Australia to Pakistan, has a livelier press than the US big-city monodailies. Colby Cosh says (and I think it's true) that one reason why there are fewer Brit bloggers than you might expect is because many of those people are already writing for British newspapers. I think that's why when conservative US bloggers need a bit of red meat they can tear to pieces they go to The Guardian rather than The Boston Globe or The San Francisco Chronicle. Idiocy-wise, there's no difference, but the boys at The Guardian can write.
John Hawkins: I noticed that you defended Little Green Footballs when it was attacked by MSNBC's weblog Central and I also noticed a mention of Bill Quick's Daily Pundit in one of your columns as well. Do you regularly read both of those blogs? What other blogs do you read regularly?
Mark Steyn: Actually, I'm not very computer-minded. I never had one until 1999, when the Telegraph and the National Post sent me off to cover the impeachment trial and, because of the time differences and other factors, they demanded I get a laptop. Before then, I had a stenographer, and I suppose she had a typewriter or some such, though I never checked. She definitely had a dictation pad. Actually, she still does, and I still like to work that way.
I only discovered blogs - or "blogs", as we old-media types say - after Sept 11, when I started getting feedback from people who'd come across me via Instapundit and so on. I don't think it's any coincidence that blogs have been strongest in the US, where the dozy monodailies are so excruciatingly boring and where incredibly dull columnists seem able to hold down prime op-ed real estate for decade after decade. America's torpid j-school culture is killing American newspapers, both in style and content. Why, for example, does no print columnist have the curiosity to do what Charles Johnson does and make a specialty of finding out what the Muslim world is saying about the west? If this war ever ends, I figure I'll lose a lot of my blog admirers, because on the whole I'm a tad more socially conservative than they are. But I don't really care about that: you don't have to agree with Ken Layne to appreciate that the guy can write.
I credited Megan McArdle in some column after some expert Europhile commentators in the English-speaking world were trying to play down Le Pen's performance in the French Presidential election - Le Pen only got a little more than he usually gets, pure fluke he came second, nothing to see here, move along. Megan said: "They're completely missing the point, which is that it's hilarious." I couldn't put it any better than that, so why not give her the credit? It's the pomposity of American print guys that's so breathtaking: I'm often quoted disapprovingly in American papers by columnists who go "someone by the name of Mark Steyn", "one Mark Steyn", "a Mark Steyn". What's up with that? Lewis Lapham did it a while back. I'll bet my weekly readership over his any day of the week. All he has to do is do a Nexis search and in ten minutes he'll know who I am. But these fellows are so status conscious that the effortless superiority is essential to their sense of themselves. The Internet doesn't have those kind of Kay Graham dinner-party seating hang-ups. I was going to write about Liza's new reality show when I saw Bill Quick had an item announcing it had gone into production. He headlined it: "The terrorists have won." Well, there's nothing to say after that, is there?
John Hawkins: Is there anything else you'd like to say or promote?
Mark Steyn: No, I'm all tuckered out now.
by John Hawkins
John Hawkins: You're one of the many people (myself included) who have come out and said loud and often that you think Bin Laden is dead. Are you still of that opinion and if so, how do you account for the tape recording from "Bin Laden" that the government says they believe is real?
Mark Steyn: First, an audio recording is the easiest form of evidence to fake - easier than paper, easier than video. I got my first job in radio from faking an aircheck in my bedroom when I was 17. So if the only recorded evidence of your identity in the last 14 months is an audio tape, that suggests either you're dead or in too poor condition even for the most artfully edited video appearance.
Secondly, the US Government said they were "almost certain" it was bin Laden. That Swiss institute said they were "almost certain" it wasn't. In this instance, the Swiss are the disinterested party. With everything that's come out since 9/11, I have no great confidence in the alleged expertise of Federal agencies. It's also clear that the Bush Administration is in no great hurry to pronounce bin Laden dead: true, the Dems keep teasing them about the fact that he's still running around out there, but that's less of a problem than declaring him deceased and having Chirac, Schroder and the rest of the gang saying, "Congratulations, you got your man. War's over. Everybody go home."
Thirdly, he isn't actually "running around". Since 9/11, al-Qaeda have been unable to pull off any kind of follow-up in a western country: their only successes have been in more loosely policed environments, such as Tunisia and Bali. That suggests the US was able to accomplish a serious degradation of their infrastructure during the Afghan campaign, and border vigilance is doing a lot of the rest. The way to respond to that would be for al-Qaeda to encourage a few more freelance operations by western Muslims, like the LAX guy and the shoebomber. After all, the ideological supporters of bin Ladenism vastly outnumber the formal card-carriers. But even the shoebomber types have fallen silent. If ever there was a time for a video call to jihad, these last eight or nine months have been it. OBL hasn't done it because he can't. Audio cassettes aren't going to cut it: even al-Jazeera wants better visuals.
John Hawkins: How likely do you think it is that we'll see a permanent resolution to the dispute between the Israelis & Palestinians within the next decade?
Mark Steyn: Not very. Your man Ken Layne called the Palestinians "a wrecked people" and that's right. Whatever the merits of their cause, the decision by the PA's corrupt and incompetent leadership to infect their youth with this death-cult psychosis has only postponed indefinitely any kind of Palestinian state. They need several years without two things: 1) Arafat and his bespoke apologists (Saeb and Hanan and co), who have nothing to offer; as I've said before, give 'em Switzerland to run and they'd turn it into a sewer. And 2) The UN: the UN and its "refugee" "camps" are one of the biggest obstacles to peace and are deeply complicit in both the territory's culture of corruption and its terrorism. The biggest mistake in this long tragedy was the original British partition of the Palestine Mandate in 1922, for no other reason than to carve out an invented kingdom for a Hashemite prince they thought could save them a few quid in administration costs. Penny wise, pound foolish. Jordan is a Palestinian state and Jordan needs to be involved in the final settlement of this question. If we're to have a second Palestinian state, it should include some Jordanian territory, too.
John Hawkins: There is a profound difference in the way that most Americans and most Europeans seem to view the conflict in Israel. What do you think accounts for that difference?
Mark Steyn: You have to differentiate between the British and the Continent. The British aren't anti-Semitic, but they're hot for Arabs. The British ruling class looks at the Arab and sees a desert version of his own most cherished myths: look at the Prince of Wales all togged out in his Lawrence of Arabia get-up just to have dinner with one of bin Laden's brothers. The Continentals are something else. Some just don't like Jews and resent having been unable to express that opinion honestly these last 50 years. But with the others the psychology's a little more complicated. Almost every European country was tainted by the Holocaust and Nazi occupation, but for the sake of the post-war settlement the world agreed to pretend only Germany was to blame. Not so. In France and Holland, the locals eagerly herded Jews onto those eastbound trains. In Belgium, industrial production went up under the Nazis. After half-a-century, the Continentals are sick of this guilt trip. They need to see Israel as the aggressor for their own psychological health. That's why that wacky Dutch broad who's married to the big Eurobanker keeps comparing Sharon to Hitler and Likud to the Nazis. It's a way of evening the score - "Sure, we had Hitler, you have Sharon; we have Auschwitz, you have Jenin." It's their way of belatedly taking a moral shower, a way of saying, "See, the score's one-one now. You're as bad as us. Let's just call it a draw and move on."
John Hawkins: Do you think we would have been better off if we would have invaded Iraq this summer instead of waiting this long?
Mark Steyn: Yes. The time lost has emboldened America's enemies - I use the term elastically - from the peace movement, which is a little less of a joke today than it was last spring, to Jacques Chirac to Kim Jong-Il. John Podhoretz keeps writing these columns in The New York Post congratulating Bush on one tremendous victory after another - over Tom Daschle, over Kofi Annan, over Dominique de Villepin. But these are not the enemy, they're just speed-bumps on the way to the enemy, and they should all have been left receding into the distance in the rear-view mirror a long time ago.
John Hawkins: Hypothetically, let's say that somehow, someway, George Bush were convinced not to invade Iraq and were to promise not to invade any other nation during the war on terrorism. What do you think the consequences of that would be?
Mark Steyn: He'd be a one-term President, and the death of the west would be pretty much a certainty. In hard terms, the best reason to hang Saddam is pour encourager les autres. Similarly, if he gets off, the North Koreans and Syrians and the more devious princes in the House of Saud will draw entirely reasonable conclusions about their freedom to operate.
John Hawkins: If we invade Iraq without getting UN approval, what do you think the consequences will be for the United Nations?
Mark Steyn: The UN will survive but it will be greatly diminished, which will be a good thing. I don't want it involved in the war, or in the post-war reconstruction.
John Hawkins: Let's say that things go well in Iraq and that we dispose of Saddam in short order with a minimal number of American and Iraqi civilian casualties. What do you think our next step in the war on terrorism should be?
Mark Steyn: The next step should be to quarantine the Saudis. The US has a moral distaste for imperialism, which is fair enough, but, on the other hand, when it scuppered the British and French over Suez in 1956, all it did was deliver the Middle East out of western influence and into the hands of what it thought were pliable strongmen. That's no more morally superior than western imperialism and in practical terms it's been a lot worse. We need to reform the entire region. To those cynical Europeans who say, "Oh, it's absurd to think Arabs can ever be functioning members of a democrat state", I'd say, in that case why are you allowing virtually unrestricted Muslim immigration into your own countries? So I'd say: after Iraq, Iran won't be far behind; we then quarantine Saudi Arabia and explain the realities of life to Egypt and Syria.
John Hawkins: How do you see the conflict between the United States and North Korea playing out?
Mark Steyn: I'm relatively relaxed, if only because a while back I made my own peace with the big change in global reality: during the Cold War I was never one of those people living in fear of impending nuclear annihilation - the nukes were in the hands of the Americans, British, French, Russians and Chinese, none of whom are stark staring nuts. Now the nukes have gone freelance, and more or less anyone can grab one and take out, if not New York or London, then one of their less vigilant neighbours - Vancouver or Rotterdam. It's a horrible vision, and I don't know why the Give-Peace-A-Chance crowd are so insouciant about it, but I'd be very surprised if we get through the next five years without a terrible catastrophe in a western city.
John Hawkins: Are you surprised that Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is now saying that the US doesn't need to go back to the UN Security Council again and that Canada will support a US attack on Iraq?
Mark Steyn: No. I'm never surprised by what M Chretien says because he'll likely say something just the opposite 24 hours later. In a way, I prefer Herr Schroder's position. If your people are opposed to war, why not say we'll have no truck with this? Chretien - with his silly Texan sneers at Liberal fundraisers - has encouraged anti-Americanism. Fair enough - except that 90% of the Canadian economy is dependent on the US. Hence, his ludicrous attempt to ride both horses - to be privately supportive of Washington while hoping no one gets to hear about it back home. He's an irrelevant old fool.
John Hawkins: Do you think most Canadians are concerned about the fact that their military has been so drastically underfunded that Canada, a country with a long, proud history of punching above its weight class militarily, wouldn't be capable of going to war with a third world country anymore?
Mark Steyn: I'd like to think they were. Canada's regiments are some of the most distinguished in the Commonwealth, and the world. The Royal Canadian Air Force was at one time the most glamorous air force in the world. The Royal Canadian Navy had the third largest surface fleet in the world. But Pierre Trudeau's alleged "reinvention" of Canada was actually little more than a demolition job, and among the things to be most comprehensively demolished was our military tradition. A nation that can't defend itself isn't a nation anymore. Ottawa and Washington have just announced a so-called "mutual aid" agreement, whereby, in the event of a terrorist strike on a US or Canadian city, each country's armed forces would be able to respond to the other's needs. I don't think this means, if al-Qaeda hit Detroit or Minneapolis, you're going to be seeing the Princess Pats or Lord Strathcona's Horse on the streets down there.
John Hawkins: You're a regular visitor to Europe so I'm sure you've seen plenty of anti-Americanism over there. But, is there any surprise in Europe over the amount of venom directed at Europe from Americans these days? There was very little of that sort of thing before 9/11, but it has certainly picked up since then.
Mark Steyn: They don't get it. They insulted America decade in, decade out, and no-one cared because no-one noticed. After 9/11, Americans started noticing.
John Hawkins: Why did the Conservative party in Britain, the Tories, turn into such a total and complete mess after Thatcher left office?
Mark Steyn: Because British Conservatism is even more of an incompatible coalition than American conservatism. In the US, you have fiscal conservatives, and the religious right, and the gun nuts, and they don't all rub along, but they're not explicitly opposed to each other. In the UK, there's no social conservatism to speak of and not much libertarianism either. What you have are Atlanticist Conservatives, like Mrs Thatcher, and a numerically smaller but vastly more influential group of essentially defeatist patrician Conservatives who think that Britain's a lost cause unless it's folded in to a European superstate whose legal systems, parliamentary structures and political culture are completely at odds with a thousand years of British history. Mrs Thatcher was able to hold the defeatist patricians at bay for 11 years. John Major wasn't.
John Hawkins: I'm hearing all sorts of horror stories about law enforcement in Britain. People are being locked up for defending their homes, the police are no longer even investigating burglaries that aren't easy to solve, & the crime rate is exploding. What is causing British law enforcement to fall apart like this?
Mark Steyn: Crime in Britain is terrible, and the worse it gets the more adamant the police are that you should be able to do nothing about it yourself. The British are different from the French and the Russians and almost every other European power in that their revolution - the British Revolution - took place overseas, in the American colonies. The British subjects who were interested in liberty won the day in the American colonies. At home, the view that "public order" should take precedence prevails to this day. When I bought my home in New Hampshire, I asked the local police chief (it's a one-man department) about what I should do in the event of an attempted break-in. He said, "Well, you could call me at home. But it'd be better if you dealt with it. You're there and I'm not." The British police would rather die than admit that. So, instead of prosecuting the burglar, they prosecute the homeowner for "disproportionate response". You're supposed to wait until the burglar has revealed his weapon before picking yours. "Ah, forgive me, old boy, for reaching for the kitchen knife. I see you've brought not a machete but a blunt instrument. Be a good sport and allow me a moment to retrieve my cricket bat from under the bed, there's a good egg." This is insane, but, despite the visible deterioration of civic life in even the leafiest suburbs and villages, the British show no sign of rousing themselves to do anything about it.
John Hawkins: Who do you see winning the Democratic primary and taking on George Bush in 2004?
Mark Steyn: Not the newly Jewish John Kerry, or whatever his original name is. There's an Irish butter called Kerrygold, which seems vaguely apt. John Kerry is this season's Al Gore: he's being defined by the jokes about him. Not Howard Dean: he's a lightweight already way out of his league, and his "pro-choice" pandering was pathetic even by Dem standards; he all but called for audience volunteers so he could demonstrate his bona fides by performing a partial-birth abortion on them. Right now, I'd say Lieberman and Edwards look best, and, in that game, you'd have to give the advantage to Edwards, as he's closer to where the base is on the war. It's true Clinton was comparatively a "right-wing" Democrat but, to the dopey peacenik base, he had his street cred with his Grosvenor Square demos and the draft-dodging. This year it's harder to be a right-wing Dem because the measure of that is the war, on which the base demands total frivolity. My one hope is that Al Sharpton stays in a long time.
John Hawkins: Since you cover movies for the Spectator, how about giving us you top 5 movies from 2002/2003 along with perhaps one sentence on what made each movie so exceptional.
Mark Steyn: Well, not sure how many I can remember but here goes...
Pauline et Paulette - If you only see one film about a mentally subnormal Flemish geriatric in a small Belgian town, make it this one. Really.
The Closet - This was one of my favourite comedies of the year. A French movie about a dull accountant who hears he's about to be fired and so comes out as gay (he's not at all) so that they won't be able to get rid of him. Funny take on political correctness.
We Were Soldiers - In a way I preferred this to Black Hawk Down because it's so square. It's a film about soldiering in Vietnam that could have been made in 1965. The bit at the end with the mocking of the dopey press corps is priceless.
Unfaithful - the French lover's a joke, but Diane Lane is awfully good
Spider-Man - I would have liked a swingier theme tune, and the Green Goblin was never the most interesting villain, but everything else works very well.
John Hawkins: Tell us a little bit about your newest book, The Face Of The Tiger.
Mark Steyn: Well, it's a collection of columns and essays on 9/11 in the broadest sense - from my instant reaction on the day itself to a review of Black Hawk Down to longer essays on rebuilding the Middle East. I started getting requests for a collection and round about the G8 summit in Alberta I thought well, why not? I think most of the stuff stands up well, and some of my predictions made on the day itself - like the end of Nato - look better every week.
John Hawkins: Can you recommend three non-fiction books that you think everyone should read?
Mark Steyn: Not really. These days, I find myself reading more fiction than non-fiction. After 9/11, I read John Buchan's Greenmantle, which is set during the Great War and is about a Messianic Muslim leader - a lot of people think Buchan is racist; what they really mean is that he's very sharp on particular national characteristics. His view of the Germans and the Arabs stands up very well. Along the same lines, just before Die Another Day came out, I re-read Ian Fleming's From Russia With Love: the section set in Turkey is very pertinent and well observed. Ghazi Algosaibi, the Saudi Minister of Water, was kind enough to send me his latest novel, A Love Story, with the warm personal inscription "To Mark, Ambivalently, Ghazi". It's very erotic in a sublimated kind of way. Ghazi's a classic example of the problem with a lot of Middle Eastern and Asian countries: they've got a ruling class that's charming, witty, amusing, intelligent, but is hopeless at actually ruling. Finally, let me put in a plug for Ken Layne's Dot.Con, which I read in a single sitting and is hilarious.
John Hawkins: Do you have any tips for all of us bloggers who are hoping to one day live the "life of Steyn" and jet around the world making scads of cash for cranking out editorials?
Mark Steyn: I never know how to answer this. Most of my work is for Hollinger Inc, a Canadian media group whose principal assets are in the United States and the United Kingdom. Well, I'm a Canadian whose principal assets are in the United States and the United Kingdom, so I'm never going to find a better fit than that. My advice is: you shouldn't become so ideological you can't see the comedy in your own side. That's one of the differences between Fleet Street and the American press. My other advice is that almost any other English-speaking country, from Australia to Pakistan, has a livelier press than the US big-city monodailies. Colby Cosh says (and I think it's true) that one reason why there are fewer Brit bloggers than you might expect is because many of those people are already writing for British newspapers. I think that's why when conservative US bloggers need a bit of red meat they can tear to pieces they go to The Guardian rather than The Boston Globe or The San Francisco Chronicle. Idiocy-wise, there's no difference, but the boys at The Guardian can write.
John Hawkins: I noticed that you defended Little Green Footballs when it was attacked by MSNBC's weblog Central and I also noticed a mention of Bill Quick's Daily Pundit in one of your columns as well. Do you regularly read both of those blogs? What other blogs do you read regularly?
Mark Steyn: Actually, I'm not very computer-minded. I never had one until 1999, when the Telegraph and the National Post sent me off to cover the impeachment trial and, because of the time differences and other factors, they demanded I get a laptop. Before then, I had a stenographer, and I suppose she had a typewriter or some such, though I never checked. She definitely had a dictation pad. Actually, she still does, and I still like to work that way.
I only discovered blogs - or "blogs", as we old-media types say - after Sept 11, when I started getting feedback from people who'd come across me via Instapundit and so on. I don't think it's any coincidence that blogs have been strongest in the US, where the dozy monodailies are so excruciatingly boring and where incredibly dull columnists seem able to hold down prime op-ed real estate for decade after decade. America's torpid j-school culture is killing American newspapers, both in style and content. Why, for example, does no print columnist have the curiosity to do what Charles Johnson does and make a specialty of finding out what the Muslim world is saying about the west? If this war ever ends, I figure I'll lose a lot of my blog admirers, because on the whole I'm a tad more socially conservative than they are. But I don't really care about that: you don't have to agree with Ken Layne to appreciate that the guy can write.
I credited Megan McArdle in some column after some expert Europhile commentators in the English-speaking world were trying to play down Le Pen's performance in the French Presidential election - Le Pen only got a little more than he usually gets, pure fluke he came second, nothing to see here, move along. Megan said: "They're completely missing the point, which is that it's hilarious." I couldn't put it any better than that, so why not give her the credit? It's the pomposity of American print guys that's so breathtaking: I'm often quoted disapprovingly in American papers by columnists who go "someone by the name of Mark Steyn", "one Mark Steyn", "a Mark Steyn". What's up with that? Lewis Lapham did it a while back. I'll bet my weekly readership over his any day of the week. All he has to do is do a Nexis search and in ten minutes he'll know who I am. But these fellows are so status conscious that the effortless superiority is essential to their sense of themselves. The Internet doesn't have those kind of Kay Graham dinner-party seating hang-ups. I was going to write about Liza's new reality show when I saw Bill Quick had an item announcing it had gone into production. He headlined it: "The terrorists have won." Well, there's nothing to say after that, is there?
John Hawkins: Is there anything else you'd like to say or promote?
Mark Steyn: No, I'm all tuckered out now.
I will put my breath into you and you shall live again.
EZEKIEL 37:14
EZEKIEL 37:14
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Leonid - National Team
- Posts: 4493
- Joined: 06 Dec 2004, 21:54
by Leonid on 29 Jun 2005, 19:38
Mark Steyn Interview #2
Once again, I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to interview the man I consider to be the best columnist in the business, Mark Steyn.
This interview was conducted via email and we covered a number of topics including Steyn's syndication in the US, Israel, the future of Europe and Nato, Christianity in Europe, Iraq, illegal immigration, and the American left's view of foreign policy.
Enjoy!
John Hawkins: You seem to be widely acknowledged as the best conservative columnist in the business. Just as one proof of that, twice now I've polled right-of-center bloggers on their favorite columnist and twice now (here & here) you've won by a huge margin. So why is it, in your opinion, that your columns are not very widely syndicated in American newspapers?
Mark Steyn: Well, there are two answers to that: the first is that it's true US newspapers are not exactly beating my door down. The second is that, when they do beat my door down, my loyal retainer sets the dogs on them and peppers their retreating posteriors with buckshot. I'll explain that second part first. I appear in newspapers in a lot of different countries, and the sad fact is that, mainly as a consequence of local newspaper monopolies, US syndication fees represent some of the lowest publication rates in the world - that's to say, to take one recent example, you'd earn more from a single reprint in a Fijian newspaper than one certain prominent US statewide daily was proposing to pay for my column for an entire year. The US syndication business is the publishing equivalent of vaudeville, and I don't particularly see why it's in my interests to fill up Gannett’s newspapers for free. If I'm going to give it away, I'd rather folks had to come to the website to see it, where there's a chance they'll hang around long enough to buy a book. So I've no interest in US syndication as a business model. We make exceptions for certain newspapers whose op-ed editors are genuinely eager to carry the column. But I have no great ambitions within US journalism.
But, to go back to your first point, the reason they're not exactly beating the door down is because I'm not a good fit for American monopoly dailies. In London, the most competitive newspaper market in the world, papers thrive by encouraging distinctive controversial voices. In America, the average Gannett or other monodaily prefers a tone of self-regarding dullness. As my friend John O'Sullivan put it, "They neither offend nor delight" - as a matter of policy. Yes, they're broadly “liberal,” but not in a lively virtuoso engaging way, only in a dreary J-school way. I think they're missing the point here. They don't realize that they do have competitors now, in new media. In 1978, having driven your print competitors out of business, you could afford to be a dull city newspaper. I don't believe you can now.
John Hawkins: So how successful do you think the Israeli strategy of walling off the Palestinians will be?
Mark Steyn: I haven’t spent a lot of time in “Palestine,” but, when I have, I’ve never seen any sign anywhere in Gaza or the West Bank of anything remotely resembling a "nationalist" movement. There’s plenty of evidence of widespread Jew-hatred and the veneration of death-cult "martyrdom," but not that anybody’s seriously interested in building a nation for the “Palestinian people.” So if you leave it to the Palestinians there's never going to be a state, only decade after decade of suicide bombings. One can advance reasons for this - it's no coincidence that the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth are the ones who have been wholly entrusted to the formal care of the UN for three generations now. But the fact is what Israel is doing is the only thing that will force the Palestinians to get up off their allegedly occupied butts and run a state: the Israelis are walling off what they feel they need, or what they can get away with, and it will be up to the gangsters of Arafatistan to see if they now feel like dropping the jihad and getting on with less glamorous activities like running highway departments and schools.
John Hawkins: For the time being, the European public seems to have turned against the idea of creating a "United States of Europe." Do you think the wishes of the European public will be respected, will they change, or do you think Europe's elites will push on for a united Europe regardless of what the people want?
Mark Steyn: What we're likely to end up with is backdoor piecemeal imposition of the bulk of the European Constitution. The EU’s so-called "democratic deficit" - the remoteness of the unaccountable unelected governing class - is, as they say, not a bug but a feature. It was set up that way because, after the massive popularity of Nazism and Fascism, the post-war European elites decided that it was necessary to build institutions that restrain the will of the people rather than express it. In the long run, that's merely a more leisurely and scenic route back to where they came in.
John Hawkins: In your opinion, why is it that Europe has become so much more secular than the United States, where Christianity is still strong?
Mark Steyn: The short answer is separation of church and state - and I use that phrase as it was intended to be used: The founders’ distaste for "establishment of religion" simply means that they didn't want President Washington also serving as head of the Church Of America and the Archbishop of Virginia sitting in the Unites States Senate - as to this day the Queen is Supreme Governor of the Church Of England and the Archbishop of York sits in the House Of Lords. Most European countries either had de jure state churches, like England, or de facto ones, like Catholic Italy. One consequence of that is the lack of portability of faith: in America, when the Episcopalians and Congregationalists go all post-Christian and relativist, people find another church; in Britain, when Christians give up on the Church of England, they tend to give up on religion altogether.
So the dynamism of American faith exemplifies the virtues of the broader society: the US has a free market in religion, Europe had cosseted overregulated monopolies and cartels. The other salient point is that obviously Europe does have a religion: radical secularism. The era of the state church has been replaced by an age in which the state itself is the church. European progressives still don't get this: they think the idea of a religion telling you how to live your life is primitive, but the government regulating every aspect of it is somehow advanced and enlightened.
John Hawkins: A lot of people like to play down the differences between America and Europe, but it has become clear that there is a huge cultural & political gap between us on a wide variety of issues. Why do you believe we've grown so far apart or have we also been split like this and just haven't really noticed because our cooperation during the Cold War masked the differences?
Mark Steyn: Well I'd say the Cold War in the end caused many of the irreconcilable differences. By guaranteeing the Continent's security, the US liberated most of Western Europe from the core responsibilities of nationhood. And if you treat grown-ups like children they’ll behave like children. It's essentially the American taxpayer, for example, who pays for European government health care, by assuming the defence costs for Germany, Belgium and so forth.
The utopian welfarism of Europe has so corroded the basic impulses necessary for societal survival - ie, breeding - that I doubt anything can be done. But if the US seriously wanted to help it would accelerate the closure of all Continental bases. Even if that didn’t persuade them to get real, it would still be worth doing, as when the European powder keg goes up America will want to be well clear. On the basic problem of their deathbed demographics, a reader of mine, Jim Ellinthorpe, thinks President Bush should give speeches mocking the virility of European men. I'm all in favor of this, though mainly on entertainment grounds. A Berlin airlift of cheap generic Viagra might also be useful.
John Hawkins: Is it time for America to write NATO off as a lost cause or is it worth trying to save the alliance?
Mark Steyn: No, it should be written off. It’s simply not worth the amount of diplomatic effort and negotiation required to crowbar military contributions to, say, Afghanistan that are smaller than those of the New Hampshire National Guard. For example, if you look at last year’s supposed triumph of multilateral cooperation, after the Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, put the squeeze on Nato’s 26 members, they reluctantly ponied up an extra 600 troops and three helicopters for Afghanistan. That averages out at 23.08 troops per country plus almost a ninth of a helicopter apiece. And the helicopters went back after six months. What’s the point?
And to those who say that Nato is a harmless talking shop, no talking shop involving French officials is ever harmless. That's one battlefield those fellows know their way around.
John Hawkins: Since we invaded Iraq, Qaddafi has given up his WMD's, Syria has left Lebanon which is having elections, the Egyptians are going to have their first multi-party elections although Mubarak is expected to win, women are being allowed to vote in Kuwait, and now Syria is even talking about implementing some democratic reforms. Are we seeing a reverse domino effect in the Middle-East caused by the invasion in Iraq?
Mark Steyn: Yes. The key moment in the Iraqi situation was a couple of hours into the Arab networks' election day coverage: they ran out of snide cracks to make about the American occupation, the stooge politicians, etc., and suddenly fell silent as images of four generations of Iraqi families walking to the polls to vote filled the screens. Those images had a profound impact throughout the region. There's no one-size-fits-all answer and I'm certainly not in favor of that trick many African dictators have learned to master, of holding an election just good enough to get the stamp of approval of Jimmy Carter and the other western patsies. There'll be a lot of two-steps-forward-one-step-back but what’s happening is real and the momentum is all going Bush's way.
John Hawkins: In a recent column, you said: "The 21st century will be an Anglosphere century, with America, India and Australia leading the way." Why don't you see Europe, China, or Russia as likely "leaders" in the 21st century?
Mark Steyn: Russia is diseased and literally dying. Russian men already have a lower life expectancy than Bangladeshis. By 2050 that vast sprawling nation will have a smaller population than tiny Yemen. There’s no precedent for this in a relatively advanced nation not at war, and the only question is how peacefully Russia goes into its long dark night. That’s also a question for Europe, too - how smoothly it manages its transition to a majority Muslim society by the end of this century. On that, I'd bet on form – ie, violent conflagration, mass slaughter, bloody revolution, etc. Russia and Europe will be foreign policy management problems for the United States but not serious economic, cultural, or military rivals. As for China, the present day Communist boomtown is a fascinating anomaly, but in the end its political deformity will cause it serious problems.
John Hawkins: Take a look at Iraq and tell me how you think we've handled it up to this point and look ahead one year to June of 2006, just a few months before the mid-term elections in the US, and tell me where you see things going.
Mark Steyn: I think Iraq is on the wane as a domestic policy issue in the US. American troops will be there for some time, but increasingly in a supporting role to the new Iraqi forces. I was interested to see, for example, that it was the Iraqi army which rescued the Australian hostage Douglas Wood. A year ago, this would almost certainly have been a western Special Forces operation. So, although there will be many terrible individual atrocities in the days ahead, there’s no strategic purpose to them other than to drive a weak-willed US Congress into cutting and running. My bet is that enough of the American people are made of sterner stuff, and that Democrats who continue to argue for retreat – and thus defeat - will find the anti-Iraq drum has less and less resonance.
There’ll be other changes with the Iraqis in the driving seat, rather than a Bush Administration that has to keep one eye out on whether Dick Durbin’s going to blubber all over the Senate floor again. Baghdad is likely to be far less squeamish about its enemies than Washington is. I don't just mean in the sense of that TV show they have over there, the one where they broadcast the interrogations of captured insurgents, which is the only reality TV show I enjoy watching. I'm also thinking of the Syrian border, where Iraqi troops are much more likely to exercise their right of hot pursuit than the Americans are. This time next year, it could be Iraq destabilizing Syria rather than the other way around.
As for what was done wrong, what's done is done. In 1922, Britain had a long-established full-time 24/7 Colonial Office staffed by Arabists who'd been plotting for half a century to get their hands on Mesopotamia, and even they couldn't get it right. America really needs an equivalent of the Colonial Office - obviously with some pantywaist milquetoast touchy-feely name more suited to the tender sensibilities of the age - but I understand why a profoundly un-imperial culture recoils from such a move.
John Hawkins: This line is from one of your columns:
"Two years after ''the day America changed forever,'' the culture is in thrall to the same dopey self-delusion it held on Sept. 10, 2001: There are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet apologized to."
Today, in 2005 that seems truer than ever, well, at least on the left. Why do think the American left has become so incapable of dealing with foreign policy threats?
Mark Steyn: There are two malign trends of the last four decades, and in the war on terror they’ve merged. For the far left, the issue is always America. So, if America's destabilizing some Marxist-Leninist socialist utopia the left takes the side of the Marxist-Leninist socialist utopia. Likewise, if America's at odds with misogynist racist homophobic theocrats, the left takes the side of the sodomite-beheaders and the freelance clitorectomy performers. That’s entirely consistent once you realize it’s simply a choice of United States vs [Your Name Here].
More worrying is the complete evaporation of the moderate credible foreign policy Scoop Jackson Democrats. I would attribute this to the descent into legalism of the soft left. You see this in John Kerry's view of terrorism as a matter for law enforcement and subpoenas - a strategy that's completely failed when cases have come to trial in Germany, Britain, Holland and elsewhere. And, when it comes to Guantanamo, too many Democrats have a John Edwards-like tendency to talk about terrorists as if they're one almighty class-action suit they can't wait to sign up. A buffoon like Dick Durbin – making a legalistic “terrorists’ rights” argument with deranged Hitler comparisons – is the perfect embodiment of both the soft and hard left.
John Hawkins: You don't do a lot of writing about illegal immigration so, I thought it might be interesting to hear what you think the best way to handle the problem would be. Could you enlighten us?
Mark Steyn: Both parties have been weak on illegal immigration, even though the 9/11 attackers used the illegal-immigrant support network to facilitate their operation. You can’t even use the word “illegal” in polite society – ie, Democrats and media. Illegal immigrants are now fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community, the country’s biggest minority.. Anything would be better than the present system, of allowing illegal immigrants to corrupt national databases, live tax-free, change the results of state and local elections, and ultimately undermine the integrity of American citizenship.
The problem starts with the sclerosis of the legal immigration system. Routine and essentially non-discretionary immigration cases – such as a US citizen who marries a foreign spouse - take ages to be processed by the bureaucracy. That's time and resources that could be devoted to the real problems. When the INS mailed Mohammed Atta his visa six months to the day after he died ploughing his plane into the World Trade Center, I wrote that in the sense his paperwork wasn't completed until he was dead he may be a more poignant symbol of US immigration than we realize. The principles aren’t difficult: legal immigration from friendly states should be swift and efficient; US citizenship should be a privilege and hard to acquire; and illegal immigration should be all but impossible, rather than a rational choice for which you will pay no penalty.
John Hawkins: It's still rather early so no one could hold you to it at this point, but give me the 3 Republicans you'd most like to see in the hunt for the Republican nomination in 2008?
Mark Steyn: I'm not sure I can give you three. I was always skeptical of Condi Rice as a candidate for elected office, but I heard her speak at the US Naval Academy last year and I thought she was a very deft and politically adroit spokesperson for the Republican cause. She has a kind of formality which is oddly appealing in an age when most politicians feel obliged to take refuge in a faintly creepy fake chumminess. Other than that, I don’t want any Senators and the current crop of Governors is problematic, burdened either with overly familiar surnames (Bush), foreign birthplaces (Schwarzenegger) or the fatal habits acquired by serving as Republican governors of Democrat states. The Mitt Romney boomlet is ridiculous: he’s a charming fellow but he’s won just one election in a state whose monolithic political culture means he’s got absolutely zero legislative accomplishments. The media dismissed Bush because he’d “only” been Governor of Texas for a couple of terms. Being a legislatively isolated figleaf Governor of Massachusetts is suddenly a big deal?
John Hawkins: Why did you stop writing for the National Post and is there any bad blood there?
Mark Steyn: I stopped because they fired the Editor and Deputy Editor and various other folks I liked – like the Marketing lady. I’m all in favour of firing people, but not if the guys you replace them with aren’t as good. So I left. The National Post was one of the great adventures of my journalistic life, not just because it was a conservative venture in a liberal country, but because it brought a tremendous brio and humor to a torpid newspaper culture. There seemed no point in sticking with the paper on its slide toward smugly conventional Trudeaupian mediocrity. Today the paper still has some great individual voices - Robert Fulford, George Jonas, Andrew Coyne - but it has no coherent identity, and the reality of an over-regulated media environment in a one-party state means that the current owners have compelling reasons to remain Liberal Party courtiers. Conrad Black, the paper’s founder, was a very rare exception to that rule.
John Hawkins: So what blogs are you reading regularly these days?
Mark Steyn: I read a wide range. They come and go, but I’m still reading many of those I mentioned to you last time round, like Natalie Solent in Britain and Tim Blair down under. Going back to my earlier point about the dullness of many newspaper comment pages, look at, say, Saskatchewan: it’s got a yawnsville newspaper - The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix – and one of the sharpest bloggers on the planet, Kate McMillan. I don't know Miss McMillan, never met her, doubt I ever will, but she's a thousand times pithier and more insightful than the fellows holding down the columnar real estate at the Star-Phoenix. Someone should snap her up just for the sharpness of her headlines, one-line squibs, and nifty asides. It's the same with the Power Line guys vs. the Star-Tribune in Minnesota.
One of the great lessons of the last few years is that journalism schools build their guild mentality at the expense of everything else - the ability to write, the ability to make an argument, an eye for a story, or even basic curiosity about the world we live in. It’s the pomposity of the mainstream press that will do for them: They're simply not as nimble as a fellow like Captain Ed. I should add in fairness that there are those with a foot in both camps - like the great Michelle Malkin - who understand the new world very well.
John Hawkins: Is there anything else you'd like to say or promote before we finish up?
Mark Steyn: No, as I said at the end of our last interview, I'm all tuckered out now, and as that was a couple of years ago when I was younger and fitter, I'm even more tuckered out this time. And, under Quebec’s socialized health care system, I’m still waiting for my appointment for my first bout of being tuckered out.
Once again, I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to interview the man I consider to be the best columnist in the business, Mark Steyn.
This interview was conducted via email and we covered a number of topics including Steyn's syndication in the US, Israel, the future of Europe and Nato, Christianity in Europe, Iraq, illegal immigration, and the American left's view of foreign policy.
Enjoy!
John Hawkins: You seem to be widely acknowledged as the best conservative columnist in the business. Just as one proof of that, twice now I've polled right-of-center bloggers on their favorite columnist and twice now (here & here) you've won by a huge margin. So why is it, in your opinion, that your columns are not very widely syndicated in American newspapers?
Mark Steyn: Well, there are two answers to that: the first is that it's true US newspapers are not exactly beating my door down. The second is that, when they do beat my door down, my loyal retainer sets the dogs on them and peppers their retreating posteriors with buckshot. I'll explain that second part first. I appear in newspapers in a lot of different countries, and the sad fact is that, mainly as a consequence of local newspaper monopolies, US syndication fees represent some of the lowest publication rates in the world - that's to say, to take one recent example, you'd earn more from a single reprint in a Fijian newspaper than one certain prominent US statewide daily was proposing to pay for my column for an entire year. The US syndication business is the publishing equivalent of vaudeville, and I don't particularly see why it's in my interests to fill up Gannett’s newspapers for free. If I'm going to give it away, I'd rather folks had to come to the website to see it, where there's a chance they'll hang around long enough to buy a book. So I've no interest in US syndication as a business model. We make exceptions for certain newspapers whose op-ed editors are genuinely eager to carry the column. But I have no great ambitions within US journalism.
But, to go back to your first point, the reason they're not exactly beating the door down is because I'm not a good fit for American monopoly dailies. In London, the most competitive newspaper market in the world, papers thrive by encouraging distinctive controversial voices. In America, the average Gannett or other monodaily prefers a tone of self-regarding dullness. As my friend John O'Sullivan put it, "They neither offend nor delight" - as a matter of policy. Yes, they're broadly “liberal,” but not in a lively virtuoso engaging way, only in a dreary J-school way. I think they're missing the point here. They don't realize that they do have competitors now, in new media. In 1978, having driven your print competitors out of business, you could afford to be a dull city newspaper. I don't believe you can now.
John Hawkins: So how successful do you think the Israeli strategy of walling off the Palestinians will be?
Mark Steyn: I haven’t spent a lot of time in “Palestine,” but, when I have, I’ve never seen any sign anywhere in Gaza or the West Bank of anything remotely resembling a "nationalist" movement. There’s plenty of evidence of widespread Jew-hatred and the veneration of death-cult "martyrdom," but not that anybody’s seriously interested in building a nation for the “Palestinian people.” So if you leave it to the Palestinians there's never going to be a state, only decade after decade of suicide bombings. One can advance reasons for this - it's no coincidence that the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth are the ones who have been wholly entrusted to the formal care of the UN for three generations now. But the fact is what Israel is doing is the only thing that will force the Palestinians to get up off their allegedly occupied butts and run a state: the Israelis are walling off what they feel they need, or what they can get away with, and it will be up to the gangsters of Arafatistan to see if they now feel like dropping the jihad and getting on with less glamorous activities like running highway departments and schools.
John Hawkins: For the time being, the European public seems to have turned against the idea of creating a "United States of Europe." Do you think the wishes of the European public will be respected, will they change, or do you think Europe's elites will push on for a united Europe regardless of what the people want?
Mark Steyn: What we're likely to end up with is backdoor piecemeal imposition of the bulk of the European Constitution. The EU’s so-called "democratic deficit" - the remoteness of the unaccountable unelected governing class - is, as they say, not a bug but a feature. It was set up that way because, after the massive popularity of Nazism and Fascism, the post-war European elites decided that it was necessary to build institutions that restrain the will of the people rather than express it. In the long run, that's merely a more leisurely and scenic route back to where they came in.
John Hawkins: In your opinion, why is it that Europe has become so much more secular than the United States, where Christianity is still strong?
Mark Steyn: The short answer is separation of church and state - and I use that phrase as it was intended to be used: The founders’ distaste for "establishment of religion" simply means that they didn't want President Washington also serving as head of the Church Of America and the Archbishop of Virginia sitting in the Unites States Senate - as to this day the Queen is Supreme Governor of the Church Of England and the Archbishop of York sits in the House Of Lords. Most European countries either had de jure state churches, like England, or de facto ones, like Catholic Italy. One consequence of that is the lack of portability of faith: in America, when the Episcopalians and Congregationalists go all post-Christian and relativist, people find another church; in Britain, when Christians give up on the Church of England, they tend to give up on religion altogether.
So the dynamism of American faith exemplifies the virtues of the broader society: the US has a free market in religion, Europe had cosseted overregulated monopolies and cartels. The other salient point is that obviously Europe does have a religion: radical secularism. The era of the state church has been replaced by an age in which the state itself is the church. European progressives still don't get this: they think the idea of a religion telling you how to live your life is primitive, but the government regulating every aspect of it is somehow advanced and enlightened.
John Hawkins: A lot of people like to play down the differences between America and Europe, but it has become clear that there is a huge cultural & political gap between us on a wide variety of issues. Why do you believe we've grown so far apart or have we also been split like this and just haven't really noticed because our cooperation during the Cold War masked the differences?
Mark Steyn: Well I'd say the Cold War in the end caused many of the irreconcilable differences. By guaranteeing the Continent's security, the US liberated most of Western Europe from the core responsibilities of nationhood. And if you treat grown-ups like children they’ll behave like children. It's essentially the American taxpayer, for example, who pays for European government health care, by assuming the defence costs for Germany, Belgium and so forth.
The utopian welfarism of Europe has so corroded the basic impulses necessary for societal survival - ie, breeding - that I doubt anything can be done. But if the US seriously wanted to help it would accelerate the closure of all Continental bases. Even if that didn’t persuade them to get real, it would still be worth doing, as when the European powder keg goes up America will want to be well clear. On the basic problem of their deathbed demographics, a reader of mine, Jim Ellinthorpe, thinks President Bush should give speeches mocking the virility of European men. I'm all in favor of this, though mainly on entertainment grounds. A Berlin airlift of cheap generic Viagra might also be useful.
John Hawkins: Is it time for America to write NATO off as a lost cause or is it worth trying to save the alliance?
Mark Steyn: No, it should be written off. It’s simply not worth the amount of diplomatic effort and negotiation required to crowbar military contributions to, say, Afghanistan that are smaller than those of the New Hampshire National Guard. For example, if you look at last year’s supposed triumph of multilateral cooperation, after the Secretary-General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, put the squeeze on Nato’s 26 members, they reluctantly ponied up an extra 600 troops and three helicopters for Afghanistan. That averages out at 23.08 troops per country plus almost a ninth of a helicopter apiece. And the helicopters went back after six months. What’s the point?
And to those who say that Nato is a harmless talking shop, no talking shop involving French officials is ever harmless. That's one battlefield those fellows know their way around.
John Hawkins: Since we invaded Iraq, Qaddafi has given up his WMD's, Syria has left Lebanon which is having elections, the Egyptians are going to have their first multi-party elections although Mubarak is expected to win, women are being allowed to vote in Kuwait, and now Syria is even talking about implementing some democratic reforms. Are we seeing a reverse domino effect in the Middle-East caused by the invasion in Iraq?
Mark Steyn: Yes. The key moment in the Iraqi situation was a couple of hours into the Arab networks' election day coverage: they ran out of snide cracks to make about the American occupation, the stooge politicians, etc., and suddenly fell silent as images of four generations of Iraqi families walking to the polls to vote filled the screens. Those images had a profound impact throughout the region. There's no one-size-fits-all answer and I'm certainly not in favor of that trick many African dictators have learned to master, of holding an election just good enough to get the stamp of approval of Jimmy Carter and the other western patsies. There'll be a lot of two-steps-forward-one-step-back but what’s happening is real and the momentum is all going Bush's way.
John Hawkins: In a recent column, you said: "The 21st century will be an Anglosphere century, with America, India and Australia leading the way." Why don't you see Europe, China, or Russia as likely "leaders" in the 21st century?
Mark Steyn: Russia is diseased and literally dying. Russian men already have a lower life expectancy than Bangladeshis. By 2050 that vast sprawling nation will have a smaller population than tiny Yemen. There’s no precedent for this in a relatively advanced nation not at war, and the only question is how peacefully Russia goes into its long dark night. That’s also a question for Europe, too - how smoothly it manages its transition to a majority Muslim society by the end of this century. On that, I'd bet on form – ie, violent conflagration, mass slaughter, bloody revolution, etc. Russia and Europe will be foreign policy management problems for the United States but not serious economic, cultural, or military rivals. As for China, the present day Communist boomtown is a fascinating anomaly, but in the end its political deformity will cause it serious problems.
John Hawkins: Take a look at Iraq and tell me how you think we've handled it up to this point and look ahead one year to June of 2006, just a few months before the mid-term elections in the US, and tell me where you see things going.
Mark Steyn: I think Iraq is on the wane as a domestic policy issue in the US. American troops will be there for some time, but increasingly in a supporting role to the new Iraqi forces. I was interested to see, for example, that it was the Iraqi army which rescued the Australian hostage Douglas Wood. A year ago, this would almost certainly have been a western Special Forces operation. So, although there will be many terrible individual atrocities in the days ahead, there’s no strategic purpose to them other than to drive a weak-willed US Congress into cutting and running. My bet is that enough of the American people are made of sterner stuff, and that Democrats who continue to argue for retreat – and thus defeat - will find the anti-Iraq drum has less and less resonance.
There’ll be other changes with the Iraqis in the driving seat, rather than a Bush Administration that has to keep one eye out on whether Dick Durbin’s going to blubber all over the Senate floor again. Baghdad is likely to be far less squeamish about its enemies than Washington is. I don't just mean in the sense of that TV show they have over there, the one where they broadcast the interrogations of captured insurgents, which is the only reality TV show I enjoy watching. I'm also thinking of the Syrian border, where Iraqi troops are much more likely to exercise their right of hot pursuit than the Americans are. This time next year, it could be Iraq destabilizing Syria rather than the other way around.
As for what was done wrong, what's done is done. In 1922, Britain had a long-established full-time 24/7 Colonial Office staffed by Arabists who'd been plotting for half a century to get their hands on Mesopotamia, and even they couldn't get it right. America really needs an equivalent of the Colonial Office - obviously with some pantywaist milquetoast touchy-feely name more suited to the tender sensibilities of the age - but I understand why a profoundly un-imperial culture recoils from such a move.
John Hawkins: This line is from one of your columns:
"Two years after ''the day America changed forever,'' the culture is in thrall to the same dopey self-delusion it held on Sept. 10, 2001: There are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet apologized to."
Today, in 2005 that seems truer than ever, well, at least on the left. Why do think the American left has become so incapable of dealing with foreign policy threats?
Mark Steyn: There are two malign trends of the last four decades, and in the war on terror they’ve merged. For the far left, the issue is always America. So, if America's destabilizing some Marxist-Leninist socialist utopia the left takes the side of the Marxist-Leninist socialist utopia. Likewise, if America's at odds with misogynist racist homophobic theocrats, the left takes the side of the sodomite-beheaders and the freelance clitorectomy performers. That’s entirely consistent once you realize it’s simply a choice of United States vs [Your Name Here].
More worrying is the complete evaporation of the moderate credible foreign policy Scoop Jackson Democrats. I would attribute this to the descent into legalism of the soft left. You see this in John Kerry's view of terrorism as a matter for law enforcement and subpoenas - a strategy that's completely failed when cases have come to trial in Germany, Britain, Holland and elsewhere. And, when it comes to Guantanamo, too many Democrats have a John Edwards-like tendency to talk about terrorists as if they're one almighty class-action suit they can't wait to sign up. A buffoon like Dick Durbin – making a legalistic “terrorists’ rights” argument with deranged Hitler comparisons – is the perfect embodiment of both the soft and hard left.
John Hawkins: You don't do a lot of writing about illegal immigration so, I thought it might be interesting to hear what you think the best way to handle the problem would be. Could you enlighten us?
Mark Steyn: Both parties have been weak on illegal immigration, even though the 9/11 attackers used the illegal-immigrant support network to facilitate their operation. You can’t even use the word “illegal” in polite society – ie, Democrats and media. Illegal immigrants are now fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community, the country’s biggest minority.. Anything would be better than the present system, of allowing illegal immigrants to corrupt national databases, live tax-free, change the results of state and local elections, and ultimately undermine the integrity of American citizenship.
The problem starts with the sclerosis of the legal immigration system. Routine and essentially non-discretionary immigration cases – such as a US citizen who marries a foreign spouse - take ages to be processed by the bureaucracy. That's time and resources that could be devoted to the real problems. When the INS mailed Mohammed Atta his visa six months to the day after he died ploughing his plane into the World Trade Center, I wrote that in the sense his paperwork wasn't completed until he was dead he may be a more poignant symbol of US immigration than we realize. The principles aren’t difficult: legal immigration from friendly states should be swift and efficient; US citizenship should be a privilege and hard to acquire; and illegal immigration should be all but impossible, rather than a rational choice for which you will pay no penalty.
John Hawkins: It's still rather early so no one could hold you to it at this point, but give me the 3 Republicans you'd most like to see in the hunt for the Republican nomination in 2008?
Mark Steyn: I'm not sure I can give you three. I was always skeptical of Condi Rice as a candidate for elected office, but I heard her speak at the US Naval Academy last year and I thought she was a very deft and politically adroit spokesperson for the Republican cause. She has a kind of formality which is oddly appealing in an age when most politicians feel obliged to take refuge in a faintly creepy fake chumminess. Other than that, I don’t want any Senators and the current crop of Governors is problematic, burdened either with overly familiar surnames (Bush), foreign birthplaces (Schwarzenegger) or the fatal habits acquired by serving as Republican governors of Democrat states. The Mitt Romney boomlet is ridiculous: he’s a charming fellow but he’s won just one election in a state whose monolithic political culture means he’s got absolutely zero legislative accomplishments. The media dismissed Bush because he’d “only” been Governor of Texas for a couple of terms. Being a legislatively isolated figleaf Governor of Massachusetts is suddenly a big deal?
John Hawkins: Why did you stop writing for the National Post and is there any bad blood there?
Mark Steyn: I stopped because they fired the Editor and Deputy Editor and various other folks I liked – like the Marketing lady. I’m all in favour of firing people, but not if the guys you replace them with aren’t as good. So I left. The National Post was one of the great adventures of my journalistic life, not just because it was a conservative venture in a liberal country, but because it brought a tremendous brio and humor to a torpid newspaper culture. There seemed no point in sticking with the paper on its slide toward smugly conventional Trudeaupian mediocrity. Today the paper still has some great individual voices - Robert Fulford, George Jonas, Andrew Coyne - but it has no coherent identity, and the reality of an over-regulated media environment in a one-party state means that the current owners have compelling reasons to remain Liberal Party courtiers. Conrad Black, the paper’s founder, was a very rare exception to that rule.
John Hawkins: So what blogs are you reading regularly these days?
Mark Steyn: I read a wide range. They come and go, but I’m still reading many of those I mentioned to you last time round, like Natalie Solent in Britain and Tim Blair down under. Going back to my earlier point about the dullness of many newspaper comment pages, look at, say, Saskatchewan: it’s got a yawnsville newspaper - The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix – and one of the sharpest bloggers on the planet, Kate McMillan. I don't know Miss McMillan, never met her, doubt I ever will, but she's a thousand times pithier and more insightful than the fellows holding down the columnar real estate at the Star-Phoenix. Someone should snap her up just for the sharpness of her headlines, one-line squibs, and nifty asides. It's the same with the Power Line guys vs. the Star-Tribune in Minnesota.
One of the great lessons of the last few years is that journalism schools build their guild mentality at the expense of everything else - the ability to write, the ability to make an argument, an eye for a story, or even basic curiosity about the world we live in. It’s the pomposity of the mainstream press that will do for them: They're simply not as nimble as a fellow like Captain Ed. I should add in fairness that there are those with a foot in both camps - like the great Michelle Malkin - who understand the new world very well.
John Hawkins: Is there anything else you'd like to say or promote before we finish up?
Mark Steyn: No, as I said at the end of our last interview, I'm all tuckered out now, and as that was a couple of years ago when I was younger and fitter, I'm even more tuckered out this time. And, under Quebec’s socialized health care system, I’m still waiting for my appointment for my first bout of being tuckered out.
I will put my breath into you and you shall live again.
EZEKIEL 37:14
EZEKIEL 37:14
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Leonid - National Team
- Posts: 4493
- Joined: 06 Dec 2004, 21:54
by Eugene Berkovich on 25 Jul 2005, 08:33
Muslims Fear Officers Have Adopted 'Shoot to Kill' Policy
by Kim Sengupta, Colin Brown, and Jason Bennetto
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0723-04.htm
The death at Stockwell station is at the center of a "shoot-to-kill" controversy after police admitted that the dead man was not one of the suspected bombers.
A Muslim Council of Britain spokesman said: "We are getting phone calls from a lot of Muslims who are distressed about what may be a shoot-to-kill policy." There had been strong cross-party support over the shooting with MPs and the Mayor, Ken Livingstone, defending it as a legitimate way to prevent suicide bombings. But the disclosure from the police that the dead man was not one of the bombers, but instead a suspected associate, is bound to lead to criticism from some senior Muslim figures.
Although the police have not commented in detail on the shooting, they made it clear that they feared the man may have been about to ignite a bomb.
Changes were introduced to the police's shooting policy after the 7 July bombings, with officers being told to aim for the head rather than the chest and go for a kill instead of incapacitation.
Allegations of an official "shoot-to-kill" policy have always been highly emotive. The British military and the RUC were condemned by civil rights activists and nationalists in Northern Ireland over deaths of republicans and there was a massive row when the SAS shot dead three IRA suspects in Gibraltar.
Mr Livingstone, speaking before the police announced that the shot man was not the bomber, said: "If you are dealing with someone who might be a suicide bomber, if they remain conscious they could trigger explosives and therefore overwhelmingly in these circumstances it is going to be a shoot-to-kill policy."
Last night Bob Marshall-Andrews QC, a Labour MP who attacked Tony Blair over the war on Iraq, said it was wrong to draw comparisons between the shooting of the IRA gang and suspected suicide bombers in London.
"What happened on the Rock was an undiluted execution. The IRA didn't blow themselves up together with people standing in front of them. If you believe someone is trapped up with bombs, the police have to shoot."
Gerald Howarth, the shadow Defense Minister, said: "These people attach no value to their own lives, unlike the IRA ... If a police officer sees somebody they believe has explosives attached to them - what do they do? It is an impossible situation"
by Kim Sengupta, Colin Brown, and Jason Bennetto
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0723-04.htm
The death at Stockwell station is at the center of a "shoot-to-kill" controversy after police admitted that the dead man was not one of the suspected bombers.
A Muslim Council of Britain spokesman said: "We are getting phone calls from a lot of Muslims who are distressed about what may be a shoot-to-kill policy." There had been strong cross-party support over the shooting with MPs and the Mayor, Ken Livingstone, defending it as a legitimate way to prevent suicide bombings. But the disclosure from the police that the dead man was not one of the bombers, but instead a suspected associate, is bound to lead to criticism from some senior Muslim figures.
Although the police have not commented in detail on the shooting, they made it clear that they feared the man may have been about to ignite a bomb.
Changes were introduced to the police's shooting policy after the 7 July bombings, with officers being told to aim for the head rather than the chest and go for a kill instead of incapacitation.
Allegations of an official "shoot-to-kill" policy have always been highly emotive. The British military and the RUC were condemned by civil rights activists and nationalists in Northern Ireland over deaths of republicans and there was a massive row when the SAS shot dead three IRA suspects in Gibraltar.
Mr Livingstone, speaking before the police announced that the shot man was not the bomber, said: "If you are dealing with someone who might be a suicide bomber, if they remain conscious they could trigger explosives and therefore overwhelmingly in these circumstances it is going to be a shoot-to-kill policy."
Last night Bob Marshall-Andrews QC, a Labour MP who attacked Tony Blair over the war on Iraq, said it was wrong to draw comparisons between the shooting of the IRA gang and suspected suicide bombers in London.
"What happened on the Rock was an undiluted execution. The IRA didn't blow themselves up together with people standing in front of them. If you believe someone is trapped up with bombs, the police have to shoot."
Gerald Howarth, the shadow Defense Minister, said: "These people attach no value to their own lives, unlike the IRA ... If a police officer sees somebody they believe has explosives attached to them - what do they do? It is an impossible situation"
Dynamo is a religion
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Eugene Berkovich - National Team
- Posts: 3562
- Joined: 07 Dec 2004, 14:54
- Location: Florida, USA
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